" I never predicted how the influence of violence in society would affect them and smother their critical thinking about violence."

When you raise your children you have hopes and dreams for them; that they will be kind, successful and happy. But what I never counted on was the influence of violence in our society on the way my three young women interact with each other and the world. There are times in our household where it feels like World War III has broken out. Vitriol surges out of them.

In 2005 I wrote a winning letter to The Weekend Australian in response to an article entitled “The Triumph of the Airhead”; at the time my biggest concern was making sure that my three little girls grew up to know they were more than their beautiful faces and bodies. I wanted them to think critically and challenge the societal norms about beauty. I think I have been successful in that, but I never predicted how the influence of violence in society would affect them and smother their critical thinking about violence.

I’m not talking about physical violence (statistics show violence is decreasing form of assault.[1]), but the violence with which humans now speak to each other, not only on social media, but in the community. Road rage has escalated; Australia now ranks ninth for road rage worldwide[2]. The winning song by Kendrick Lamar of the Triple J Hottest 100 in 2016 included lyric references to women as “bitches” and tomurder: “If I kill a nigga, it won’t be the alcohol, ayy”[3] and people lap it up without any question.

Finally, the disdainful way that humans talk about each other in politics, media and entertainment, including social media has hit new lows, with the norm being the vilification of people on mediums such as Facebook and Twitter for their opinions and appearance.

American author Arthur Brooks suggests we are speaking to each other with contempt.[4] I would go further: we have lost our regard for our fellow humans and society is teaching our children that violence through words is acceptable. We are told the old saying: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me” is untrue. But words do hurt. Contempt hurts. Disdain hurts. And it’s time we talked about it.

"In that time, I wrote lists of all the qualities I wanted in a partner, little did I know that what I should have done was written a list of all that I NEEDED. I had men come into my life in this time and I had convinced myself that they were exactly what I wanted, but they smelt my desperation a mile away and thankfully they knew that they weren’t what I needed; they knew they couldn’t give me what I needed."

Valentine’s Day, you either love it or hate it, or indeed have a healthy cynicism about it which I completely support. Valentine’s Day started as a remembrance to Christian martyrs and involved violence and bloodshed and women being hit by “hides of animals”, it had nothing at all to do with what we equate to romantic love.[1] It has turned into a mass marketing juggernaut which taps into our insecurities about our relationship and indeed our social expectations to have one, when in reality maybe we don’t actually need a relationship in our life right now.

For 14 years, I was one of those people dreading the inevitable marketing nonsense that comes up around February each year which brings up feelings of rejection, dejection and hopelessness about being a single person when deep down we just know what an amazing person that we are if only someone would just give us a chance.

I spent so much time and energy lamenting my single status, thinking that something was fundamentally wrong with me, when what I should have been appreciating exactly where I was; able to create time for me, my kids, my career and my creative projects. That time of being single was a gift, not a punishment. That time was exactly what I NEEDED to heal my previous relationship, to do the inner work on myself and to parent how I wanted without the complications that come with step-parenting and blended families.

In that time, I wrote lists of all the qualities I wanted in a partner, little did I know that what I should have done was written a list of all that I NEEDED. I had men come into my life in this time and I had convinced myself that they were exactly what I wanted, but they smelt my desperation a mile away and thankfully they knew that they weren’t what I needed; they knew they couldn’t give me what I needed.

If you read back over my blogs[2]you’ll see that I had gotten to a point where I had surrendered to single life. I accepted that I was okay with or without a partner, I had accepted the rejection to a point where I no longer took it personally. And then Kind Man arrived. You can read about it here.[3]

Had I known, I should have asked for someone who loved and accepted me just as I am.

Because that’s ultimately what I needed.

So before you go and write down all the things in a potential partner that you want. Stop, pause and ask yourself what do you NEED at this time? Do you actually NEED a person in your life?

Do you need time on your own to grieve a previous relationship?Do you need a person to support you with kids?Do you need a person who is honest? Trustworthy? Kind?Do you need someone who is good with money? Who is flexible in their sexuality?Do you need someone who accepts your family?Do you need a friend who is also your lover, adventure buddy and cheerleader? Or do you just need a sex with benefits sort of friend?Do you need someone to party with? Have children with? Chill with?

Go through all areas: sexuality, family (yours and extended), career, time, love languages, financial, dreams/goals, values. It’s in narrowing down what you need that really makes it easy to find someone who fits you and more importantly accepts you.

To be honest, I didn’t have electric chemistry with Kind Man when we met, like I did with GSM (gorgeous sexy man), but his kindness and patience opened my heart in a way that immediate electrical sexual charge never could have and that chemistry has just grown so much into an exquisite slow burn because I trust him. I trust him not to hurt me. He is just what I needed.

"The global psychic industry alone is worth billions of dollars in phone, internet and online services. Now I’m not saying don’t see a psychic if you have a burning question, I too have gone there, but perhaps asking others for help is like a band-aid on a broken leg – eventually you will need to look within for the answer. Getting a psychic reading is like a crutch – it keeps you helplessly looking outside for answers when within is where you should be grounding so your questions can be resolved."

We live in a world where Google is just a click away to find any answer to any problem that we have; relationships, money, career, health, self-help, spirituality. In this way we are always seeking outside for the answers to problems, we bypass our brains in many regards and we have no confidence in our own abilities to seek for the answers ourselves. We have become lazy in many respects and more importantly, we’ve forgotten how to use our intuition.

How many times have you seen a psychic, or posted a question on social media or asked someone for the answer and when you hear the answer, you already knew that anyway? That’s intuition. We all have it. We are all “psychic” in the sense that there are things we know; common colloquialisms like “gut feeling” and “I just knew”.

But what we’ve forgotten is to look within. We have learned a sort of helplessness that comes only from asking others to give you the answers. That’s just like doing a test in school and having someone tell you the answers, it doesn’t help you in the long run. So, it is with intuition. We need to nurture and support our own intuition.

About 10 years ago, I quit my job and started doing psychic readings with Doreen Virtue’s Angel cards. I had done the training, but already knew that I had the gift of mediumship and, well, reading body language. Then one day, I realised that people were coming looking for answers that they had known all along. They wanted confirmation. I stopped doing it not long after this realisation because I felt that I was aiding them in learned helpless and it felt false taking money from people when they themselves had all the answers within them.

What I should have done instead was to teach people how to be their own psychics! The global psychic industry alone is worth billions of dollars in phone, internet and online services. Now I’m not saying don’t see a psychic if you have a burning question, I too have gone there, but perhaps asking others for help is like a band-aid on a broken leg – eventually you will need to look within for the answer. Getting a psychic reading is like a crutch – it keeps you helplessly looking outside for answers when within is where you should be grounding so your questions can be resolved.

Looking within is much more empowering. When you go to a psychic, or ask for answers outside yourself, you give away your power, when what we need is for us all to feel completely empowered in our own abilities. We need to not give our power away. Now, I’m not saying all psychics are bad, far from it. But a good psychic will guide you to your own conclusions like a good counsellor or life coach should. And I’m also not suggesting seeing someone when you have some serious mental health issues or downloading to a friend or partner when you are mulling over things.

But I am saying that we need to back ourselves.

We need to have some inner dialogue and be brutally honest with ourselves.

We need to trust that inner nudge because we know the answers that we seek.

One of the reasons Chakra Cards are a helpful tool for re-learning to trust your own intuition. Developed in 2015, these tools are made to help you to look within for the answers. They help us to resolve issues within our own crazy monkey minds. In meditation, we are taught to quieten the monkey mind, which is an awesome skill, but those thoughts just keep coming around after you’ve finished meditation, there is no resolution. Chakra Cards bring up those thoughts and the reasons behind it for open and honest dialogue with self, or a partner. Using the cards for journaling can help to unpack some of the unresolved energies that we are hanging on to, such as anger, sadness, regret, guilt but also find the hidden joy, happiness, forgiveness and love that are bubbling just under the surface.

It’s up to you how you live your life. But since I’ve developed the Chakra Cards, I’ve not been to a psychic, I’ve not even done my own psychic readings, but I have looked to the cards for the answers and they are always right. I feel much more empowered in my ability to make decisions and know that using the self-reflection it makes me feel more inside my body and not seeking outwards.

From a religious standpoint, in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra one of the Eight Limbs of yoga is Svadhyaya, which translates to study of the sacred scriptures and of one's self. In the Bible Lamentations 3:40-42 says “Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the LORD.…”. Even from a psychological point of view self-reflection is critical for self-development:

“In sum, there is much to learn from those who frequently and conscientiously engage in self-reflection. Whether it's Buddhists engaging in meditation, alcoholics at AA meetings, or philosophers of the Enlightenment studying the texts of Immanuel Kant, being aware of ourselves is an essential step in self-improvement. It is reassuring to see so many traditions spanning thousands of years that emphasize themes identified in the psychological literature as critical for self-improvement.”[1]

"The role of women is changing from the traditional maiden, mother, crone to a time where any woman can be whatever it is she wants to be. A Goddess doesn’t have to be a young woman, or a mother, and she can age as gracefully (or disgracefully) as she wishes. It’s about women having choice; it’s about women feeling beautiful, powerful, confident and sensual in their own skins."

The internet has been awash with blogs, Instagram images and articles about being a Goddess, yet, unless you have experienced it, many women do not know what a Goddess is, or indeed, how to be one. And what on Earth does it mean to be Empowered? In the interests of full disclosure, this article will be my truth about what being an Empowered Goddess means to me.

For many years, I was plagued with self-esteem issues and it wasn’t until I did an online course with Leyolah Antara at Kundalini Dance that I felt the pulsing of energy that is the feminine energy of the Goddess that I fully understood the sensation of being an Empowered Goddess. I guess for me, I had to experience it to understand its power.

I could start by writing about how women were revered in many ancient cultures (and some modern ones), however, I think that it will detract from the issue. Such powerful women as the goddesses of early Pagan (Diana, Hretha), Hindu (Kali), Sumerian (Ishtar, Ereshkigal), Egyptian (Isis), Norse (Freyr, Bil), Irish (Dana, Brigid) and Greek (Aphrodite, Artemis) societies, not to mention those from China, Africa and the Americas as well as Indigenous ones and those in the Biblical stories, such as the divine Mary Magdalene.

I could talk about the other terms like embodied woman and Shakti that are used interchangeably about the Goddess in the early 21st Century but for the ease of the article, let’s just stick with the Goddess. Historically, women were revered as they carried children and the burden of both life and death through the process of childbirth. Thankfully, maternal deaths are decreasing and less women are dying in this important stage of life, and more interestingly, many women are choosing not to have babies. The role of women is changing from the traditional maiden, mother, crone to a time where any woman can be whatever it is she wants to be. A Goddess doesn’t have to be a young woman, or a mother, and she can age as gracefully (or disgracefully) as she wishes. It’s about women having choice; it’s about women feeling beautiful, powerful, confident and sensual in their own skins.

Women have only had the right to vote for about 100 years and the Goddess has risen historically in periods when misogyny was at its worst, such as when the Inquisition tortured and killed thousands of men and women who stood up to the church. Women who rode “cowboy” were considered witches (I kid you not!) (Stay tuned for my first novel, Matilda, based on this crazy misogynist culture in 2018). The Goddess brings us back to balance when the masculine energies become too dominant and unfortunately, we need the Goddess energy now more than ever.

Women are tired of being told what we can and can’t do by men and the institutions that run the world. We are all powerful, we know it and men know it and when they see us in our full power, they know who really wields power; and it’s not men or women, it’s a balance between the two.

The word “empower” means to “to give power or authority to; authorize, especially by legal or official means.” By its definition alone, being empowered means that we give permission to ourselves to feel the power of ourselves. By extension, an empowered person also aids and empowers other people, particularly women, ethnic minorities and those who are in some way disenfranchised by society. Putting others down, does not empower the self, and it certainly does not empower others.

An Empowered Goddess is not the antithesis of men, she lifts up the men in her life as much as she lifts the women and herself. It doesn’t have to be duality; that is dominance by men OR women, it’s about balance. The more the Empowered Goddess taps into her inner self, the more that she can empower others to be the very essence of who they are, raising us all up in a collective empowerment.

To me a Goddess is a woman who has embraced and accepted all of who she is, that is, her darkness and her light. We all have the capabilities to be a great healer or leader or indeed someone who is capable of murder, given the right scenario. A Goddess sees and acknowledges those parts of herself that reflect both the primitive parts of humanity and the full goodness of it.

A Goddess is a woman who has done a lot of self-reflection and owns all of those parts of herself that at times she doesn’t like and at times she loves. When she looks into a mirror a Goddess will sometimes see a frightened little girl, or a vulnerable woman, other times she will see a wild woman ready for anything and other times a sensual, sweet seductress.

A Goddess is a woman who is assured in her sexuality; she has no guilt or anxiety around masturbation or sex and honours each and every lover with every ounce of her being. She can see her lovers’ vulnerabilities and knows just when to support him/her and lift them up. She is able to walk away if it’s not bringing her satisfaction, yet she is happy in the moment, knowing that she is exactly where she is meant to be.

She is not afraid of men, in-fact, she knows just the right ways to disarm or seduce a man should it please her. This is not something that she shows off, but if she wants someone or something, she will get it, she knows of her power to manifest her desires in a way which is loving but not manipulative. An Empowered Goddess feels into her body and she knows it, inside and out. It’s a feeling of being connected to something greater than all of us; a flow of femininity if you like that completely honours and respects the masculine and feminine balance of life.

Note: In 2015, I created tools to help people become self-empowered; Chakra Cards. Unlike traditional tarot and other divination tools, these tap into our intuitive self and allow people to clear all that no longer serves for them and help them to become an empowered Goddess or God with the power of looking within. Chakra Cards Empower yourself; look within.